Stitchin'

I've been in the mood to stitch lately - that is, hand work. I have been working on a piece of embroidery on linen - need to photograph it for you. It's a funny southern saying and it needs some embellishment around it to make it cute.

My other project is too funny. I found ucladoc's Etsy store while searching for a birthday gift for my sister. This crafter makes original and unique counted cross stitch patterns, and what hooked me was the anatomy and medical humor designs. I mean, who would think to make a cross stitch pattern out of an x-ray or a hand? Or an MRI of a brain?  Check these patterns out:

• EKGs Heart Rhythm (I bought this one, since I'm a cardiology nurse)
• Hand x-ray
• Human Brain
• Human Heart ('nothing says I love you quite like a heart!)
• X-ray of Cervical Spine (neck)

Wouldn't these make an awesome gift for your sister the physician or your brother the chiropractor?

I can't wait to hang mine in my office!!

The Fab Shop Hop

Click to sign up!

In February, I completed the Fab Shop Hop. It's a virtual "shop hop" where you have to go to various fabric/quilt shop websites, find a special icon (the "bunny") and register that you found it. It's a month long hop, and you really need a whole month. There are over 150 shops on the list! That's a lot of hopping!

You don't have to find all of the bunnies. There are prize levels for 75 shops, 110 shops, and 140 shops.  Still, getting even 75 shops takes some diligence. But, it's fun - sometimes there are special promotions as a part of the hop - sales at the shops, patterns that you build (randomly you find a block pattern when you register a find), and sometimes bonus bunnies for extra giveaways.  Sometimes you come upon a shop you know in the real world - like someplace you visited on vacation or where you used to live.

The point of all this hopping is to generate sales for the shops. It worked for me, this time.

I have a quilt top created from a "Layer Cake" precut pack of a Moda line called "Whimsy," a style from few years ago. I can't find it in shops any more, and I'd like to make the back out of the same line. It has a specific color palette I'd like to match. Sure enough, a few of the shops in the hop had some left over Moda Whimsy!  Better yet, since its an old design, these shops had it on clearance! Bonus!

I found my backing fabric at The Quilted B from Washington state. The shop owner sent the fabric promptly, wrapped with a pretty printed ribbon from their shop, with a handwritten note of thanks. Excellent customer service. I hope to shop there again!

You can download all these images from the Moda website!!

I investigated several of the shops while hopping, if the style of the shop appealed to me. I bookmarked several as favorite shops

Well, yeah, you do have to exercise restraint and not overspend! Don't go crazy.

I also signed up for a newsletter at Stitchin' Heaven in Texas - they organize quilting vacations, like cruises and bus tours! I think that would be crazy fun to do. And their newsletter is called Hot Flashes - too funny. Sign me up!!

I hope you try the virtual shop hop. Maybe you'll win something. At the least, you'll have some fun and maybe even find a unique gift at a shop

Bev's Garden Quilt: Final

Today, I finally gave Bev her quilt. Yes, it's 2 months late for Christmas, but take a look!

I attempted and artsy casual picture above. The glare from the sun was a bit too bright. Here's a more typical quilt picture, the quilt on the bed.

This is a queen-size bed, so the quilt itself is roughly twin size.  It's a good size for curling up with on the sofa, or a nice picnic quilt.

Here's a close up of one of the quilted areas. I had a lot of fun quilting this one. I did a blocked loopy pattern in the moss-green negative space, and at the intersections of negative space, I improvised. There are 24 different designs in those spaces. Some of them turned out better than others, but it's interesting to look at, nevertheless. Here's a close-up of one such intersection that I thought turned out well.

I used variegated green 100% cotton thread (Gutermann) and I think it worked well on the plain fabric. I washed the quilt before giving it to Bev and the washing make the surface have a delightful crinkly texture. In the squares, I started doing a straight-line design, but it was taking way too long to do. I can't improvise straight lines in free-motion quilting - they need to be really straight! I used the feed dogs and my integrated dual feed (on the Pfaff machine), but then I had a lot of stopping and starting. Bleh.

I switched to a medium size stipple pattern within the blocks. Fortunately, I could alternate the blocks like I intended to use the two motifs!

The batting was a sustainable organic bamboo-cotton blend batting (Bev is an environmentalist, among other things). It quilted nicely and gave a nice drape and heft to the quilt.

So...what's my next big project???

The Art of Vacation

My husband and I are members of Disney's Vacation Club, and we go to a Disney resort about once a year. We are celebrating our 15 yr wedding anniversary this week at Disney's Animal Kingdom Lodge.  Other than the nerve-wracking journey to the Kansas City Airport amidst the first significant snow storm of the winter, it has been a lovely vacation so far.

Why did bad weather hit the one day I needed good weather for flying? Murphy's Law, I guess. Nevertheless, we both made it here in one piece.

We are focusing on relaxing and pampering, this time.

Usually, I bring some hand sewing with me when I travel. It's a great way to pass time quickly on planes. I also like to work on projects while lounging by the pool. This year, I did not bring a project - I don't have anything I wanted to work on. I have been in the mood to do embroidery, but I don't have a project in the works and I didn't have time to pull one together.

It's easy to be inspired at Disney World. Things are very colorful and artful here. When browsing the stores of Downtown Disney Marketplace, I found the books shown above. Flipping through The Imagineering Workout, I was intrigued - it contains "exercises" for your creativity, collected from the imagineers at Disney.  We all experience creative doldrums from time to time, and creativity exercises would sure help find a way through it.

I could sure use this kind of help for the KC Modern Quilt Guild's latest challenge to make a wall quilt inspired by one of Kandinsky's abstract paintings. I need all the creativity I can get.


As usual, on vacation, I forget to bring one thing or another. I forgot the card reader to download digital pictures from my camera to my computer. Of course, Disney has one for sale - they have nearly anything you could need in their stores. Since many people take lots of pictures while vacationing here, they do offer a nice selection of photo equipment. This is the cutest little card reader ever!

Cheap & Easy Way to Hang a Quilt

It's Christmas and you want to hang up your special Christmas wall hangings and quilts, but darn it! The quilt doesn't have a hanging sleeve and it's such a pain to drill into the wall, put up a rod, yadda yadda yadda. Here's a clever way to hang your quilt quickly and easily without wall damage and without damaging your quilt.

Hanging is achieved using 3-M Command Strip hooks and office binder clips.  Each hook cannot hold very much weight, but all together, they distribute the weight and can hold up something as big as a quilt.

1. Figure out where you will want to hang your quilt.
2. Figure out how many hooks and clips you'll need. You want the clip every 6 to 8 inches. The hooks look better if they are roughly evenly distributed across the quilt.  You want to use a good number of them because it will keep the floppy fabric straight.
3. Get your level out and lightly mark a straight line. You could just make small marks where the hooks will go.
4. Clean the areas and affix the hooks to the wall per the directions on the package. Make sure you line them up with your marked line the same way on each one (e.g. match up the top of the hook backing with the line, etc).
   
   
   

   
   
5. After the waiting period (usually an hour), hook your binder clips to the hooks.
   
   
   

   
   
6. Hold your quilt up to the wall, and clip go down the line one by one attaching the clips.
• You should hold most of the weight while you're hanging it - one or two hooks will probably not be able to hold the whole thing, and it will tear off the wall (potentially damaging your wall!)
• If your quilt is large, you might want to have someone help you with this step.
   
7. You can adjust the hooks where they clip onto the quilt to make it straight.

When you're ready to take it down, remember not to let only one or two hooks hold the weight of the quilt, and remove the Command hooks according to package directions to avoid damaging your wall.

Even cheaper - you can use pushpins instead of the Command hooks. They will leave a small hole in the wall, of course.

I borrowed this idea from a gift shop in North Carolina, back when I lived there. It is a nice technique for apartments, where you may not be able to drill into a wall.

Bev's Quilt: Coming Together

I'm quilting like mad on Bev's quilt. I came up with a little design for the "negative space" which has turned out to be really fun to quilt. It's easy to do and it is a forgiving pattern - does not have to be precise to look good.

Bev's Garden Quilt

The design was inspired by Leah Day's many free motion quilting project designs. I had a perception that free motion quilting had to be feathers, large designs, etc. but her work has been inspirational to see quilting designs differently.

Here's a closer look.

Close Up of Quilting

I'm intrigued by giving pattern to a blank space through the quilting. Remember that charity quilt I did a year ago? I basically superimposed a nine-patch pattern on the quilt top through the quilting. That one was crazy fun to do.

For Bev's quilt, I am using variegated thread (Gutterman 100% cotton), not something I use very often. It looks good on the plain green background. 

In the center of the "plus mark" shape,  I'll put a center design (flower, spiral, or something).  Within each vegetable pattern square, I'll quilt a design (so it doesn't puff up) but it's less important because the fabric pattern will obscure the quilting. 

New in 2012

I'm evolving again...

Thinking about this blog and what I want to do with it, what I want to give to the world through this blog,  I am getting ready to change things up. I still like its name, and I'm sticking with the artsy theme - but now, I want to broaden it. The Etsy shop is closed, selling my handiwork is over. What's next?

Creativity.

What's it mean to live creatively? I think all people have an inborn need to create, and we express it in diverse ways. Some paint pictures. Many build families. Some write books or poetry, or build websites, or decorate rooms. I sew, knit, quilt, write essays (here in my blogs), garden, cook, perform music, and take pictures. Every once in a while I branch off into a totally new creative outlet, like writing a story, scrapbooking, terrarium building, crochet, or paper arts. It exercises a different part of my brain.

So let's explore the theme of creativity this year. What can I make? What can I share with you? What can I teach you?